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Welcome to take time out of your week, to focus your mind and your heart on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ of Nazareth is no small thing.
So we are intentional with you to put our minds and our hearts on things that we don't fully understand in hopes that God might show himself to us.
and reveal to us the heart of what happened on that hillside 2,000 years ago.
I don't know if you know what you stepped into tonight,
but just a little context as we focus our hearts on this Good Friday service on a Tuesday.
A little context for you is that tonight's going to be different.
It's going to feel different.
Normally on the weekends when we gather to worship, we stand and sing songs together.
Tonight, you should feel no pressure to respond in traditional ways.
You don't have to stand and sing.
Normally on the weekends, when we gather, we preach and teach.
Tonight's going to feel different and be different than that.
This is going to be a time of guided reflection.
It's going to be a time to consider and contemplate the truths of,
the scriptures as we look deeply into the last sayings of Jesus Christ.
As we look deeply into his last words in his final hours, we're going to look at them in
both Aramaic, which is the language that he spoke and in English in hopes that through
these words Jesus might speak to us here in this place tonight.
So with that as context, I would invite you to pray.
with me. Let's pray together to start our time. Father, we come to you with humility,
with focus, with intentionality. And we ask you to show us what it is we need to see. God,
we're here for revelation. We're here to peek beyond the mundane of every day. Lord, would
you give us eyes to see and ears to hear truth? Father, would you convict us? Would you
encourage us? And would you change us as we look deeply and purposefully at what you have done
for us? Matthew records. When they came to the place that is called the skull,
There they crucified him.
And the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.
And Jesus said, Father, forgive them.
For they know not what they do.
You see, as Jesus was taken from the mocking crowds jeering,
crucify him and crucify him.
He was beaten within an inch of his life, forced to drag his own cross,
his own instrument of brutal torture and death to the trash dump on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
There the crowds gathered around and watched his professional executioners drove thick iron stakes
through the bones of his wrists and ankles, fixing him to a cross.
And they hoisted him up on the cross in all of his exhausted weight,
rested excruciatingly on the nails.
And he began to suffocate on the weight of his own body,
dying under the weight of the wrath of God poured out on the sin of the world.
He could have unleashed angels to annihilate his executioners,
and his enemies have been perfectly justified.
and he could have given the command and been let down from that cross and been perfectly justified.
And he could have pronounced eternal judgment and condemnation on his killers and the crowd and been perfectly justified.
But instead, he said, Father, forgive.
Wipe away every offense, every sin, every wrong, your own.
have done against you. Set them free, clear their record, remove their sins as far as the east is
from the west, and make them as white as snow. Write the rebellion, give them a new life, a new start,
a new heart, a new family, a new future. Father, forgive them. So who's the them?
them who? Them the Roman officials? Them the soldiers? Them the soldiers who beat him? Them the professional
killers who nailed him to those wooden beams? Them the crowds that mocked him? Them the religious
elite who lied about them to save their own position and their own power? Them the people who stood by watching like it was just
more Friday night entertainment.
Them, the two criminals who are crucified with him.
Them as disciples who watched from the shadows,
or them, his own mother and the other women.
Them who?
Them all.
And them me and them you.
They all, and we all, have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
And they all and we all.
have rebelled by our very own nature against the glory of God, and the cry of Christ on the cross
was to forgive them, me, and you. But then he doesn't stop there. He says, Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do. Do you think the soldiers knew they were scorning the sovereign
of the universe.
Do you think the crowds knew they were mocking the maker of the universe?
Do you think the Pharisees knew that they were leering at the lawgiver?
There are sins so obvious that we know we commit them.
And there are sins so deep that we have no idea that we've crossed into them.
And there are sins so pervasive that they aren't just what we do,
but it's who we are.
And there are sins so present, we can't miss them,
and sin so distant that we've long forgotten them.
And yet, the forgiveness of Christ from the cross
is so much deeper and so much wider
and so much bigger and so much stronger
and so much more pervasive and so much more powerful
than our sins have ever been
and they ever are right now or they ever will be.
and if that wasn't enough already he just doesn't stop john records in his gospel that after this
jesus knowing that all was now finished he said to fulfill the scriptures i thirst in a jar full of sour
wine stood there so they put a sponge full of sour wine on the hyssop branch and held it to his mouth
to fulfill the scriptures.
That Jesus' crucifixion was God's eternal plan for salvation.
Our sin, its depths, and its eternal effects were not a surprise to God.
He knew before the creation of the world that we would rebel against his glory.
And his plan was so great that before the foundation of the universe,
he determined that every prophecy to be foretold, and every event to unfold, was for the salvation
of his children and the declaration of his glory.
Every moment of the life and the death of Jesus, even down to his thirsting on the cross,
was the perfect eternal plan of God.
And as he thirsted, it wasn't a sponge of sour wine.
that he would drink to satisfy himself. It was the cup of God's wrath that he would drink dry to
satisfy God's holiness and justice. And as he drank the cup of the wrath of God, Jesus thirsted.
He thirsted for the presence of God to be known among his people. And he thirsted for the glory of God
to be declared in all creation. And he thirsted for the promises of God to be made true forever. And he
thirsted because he was at that moment forsaken by his heavenly father in a way he had never
known before so that you and I would never have to know that moment. And they cast lots,
and they divided his garments. And the people stood by watching, but the ruler scoffed at him,
saying, he saves others. Let him save himself if he's the Christ of God.
God is chosen one.
The soldiers also mocked him,
coming up, offering him sour wine, and saying,
if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.
There was also an inscription over him that said,
this is the king of the Jews.
One of the criminals who are hanged railed at him,
saying, are you not the Christ?
Save yourself and save us.
But the other rebuked him, saying,
Do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?
And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds.
But this man has done nothing wrong.
And he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
And he said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.
Today, no delay, no extra time that day.
What good works could that criminal have done to earn his way into paradise that day?
What teaching of Jesus could he have lived out in that moment to prove that he deserved to be in paradise?
What payback could he have made to show that he was worthy of paradise?
Or what apologies could he have said to pave his way into paradise?
none and that's exactly the point the offer to be in heaven that day was a radical declaration
that salvation is by grace alone period end of sentence but the offer was better than just an offer
of paradise that day.
It was a promise
to be with me, to be
with Jesus.
See, Jesus,
the prize is not just paradise,
but the prize is Jesus himself.
Heaven is heaven because Jesus is there
at the center, fully satisfying
to all forever.
One criminal feared nothing,
acknowledged nothing,
admitted nothing,
and received.
nothing. But the other criminal humbled himself. He feared God, admitted his sin, banked his
eternity on grace, and saw Jesus face to face in paradise that day. Surely, he has borne our griefs,
and carried our sorrows. And yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted,
but he was pierced for our transgressions.
He was crushed for our iniquities.
Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.
And with his wounds, we are healed.
All we, like sheep, have gone astray.
We have turned everyone to his own way.
And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts,
one part for each soldier, also his tunic.
But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.
So they said to one another, let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.
This was to fulfill the scripture which says,
they divided my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots so the soldiers did these things but standing by the cross of jesus
or his mother and his mother's sister mary the wife of clopis and mary magdalen when jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby
he said to his mother woman behold your son then he said to the disciple behold your son then he said to the disciple behold your
mother, and from that hour, the disciple took her to his own home. As Mary stood at the top of
Golgotha, watching her son hang on a cross, we can only imagine what she was thinking and feeling.
This ordinary woman with an extraordinary calling must have been swarmed with flashbacks of how they
got to this point. Was this really how God was going to fulfill his promise?
Was this really how the story was going to end?
Was Mary paralyzed by what she was seeing?
Or did she think back when she was met by the angel Gabriel?
The one who would tell her that she had been chosen to bear the son of the most high.
She, a Jewish teenager, a virgin betrothed to Joseph,
she knew that God's promise to David was finally being played out.
She would rejoice in song as the voice of the poor and the marginalized,
knowing that justice was finally being delivered.
But she had no idea what this would entail as she entered into this journey of motherhood.
Mary was not just a vessel for Jesus to be born,
but she was a real woman with real fears and doubts.
She was a real mother with hopes for her child.
And she was a real sinner who fell short of the glory of God.
She experienced all the joys and the struggles of pregnancy.
She felt every kick and turn of Jesus in her womb.
She anticipated meeting her son, and she experienced the pain of childbirth.
She held her crying baby in her arms while lying in a manger,
and she treasured up these things in her heart.
Did Mary think about these things when she was watching her?
son being beaten and stripped?
Did she recall back in the temple when Simeon would tell her that a sword would pierce her own
soul as her son was appointed for the rise and the fall of many?
Mary was putting all the pieces of the puzzle together while living out her worst nightmare.
Every whip of the cat of nine tails, every hammer of the nails, she felt like she was going to
die.
She heard the cries of anguish from her son while simultaneously listening to the jeers of the crowd.
Remember, Mary is a real woman, a real mother.
She was feeling like her heart was being ripped out of her chest, thinking, can I just climb up there and take his place?
He hasn't done anything to deserve this.
My son, my beloved, how is this happening?
God, is there any other way?
Jesus' affection for his people did not waver
as he endured the wrath of God for the sake of the world
in his complete humanity and his complete divinity
he was aware of everything
his desire was to gather those who rejected him
under his wings and he knew exactly what that would require of himself
Jesus brought great sorrow to Mary
because his kingship meant his suffering.
He was ushering in the justice that God had promised,
but it didn't look like what everyone expected.
He came as the suffering servant to spill his blood
as the final Passover lamb.
As Mary stood faithful to Jesus at the cross,
Jesus hung faithful to Mary from the cross.
He looked into his mother,
eyes and he saw her heartbreak into a million pieces. This woman who had so humbly cared for him since
birth was experiencing immense pain and he was allowing all of it to happen. He was so focused on the will
of his father but in the midst of his own unthinkable pain he looked at his mother with kindness.
He had not forgotten about her. While dying for her, he cared for her. He cared. He was. He cared for her. He
about her physical and emotional needs. As he was ushering in his father's kingdom, he acknowledged
Mary as his mother and his disciple. Remember his words from the cross, woman, behold your son.
Then he said to the disciple, behold, your mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his
own home. These words carried so much weight because placing Mary under the care of John meant she would be
of the new faith family Jesus was building.
She would be protected and cared for.
She would not be alone.
But for that moment in time, Mary's own sin,
along with the rest of the world,
nailed her son to the cross.
So from the cross, through blood and sweat, pain,
Jesus cries,
my God, my God.
Why have you forsaken me?
Why did God forsake his son?
I mean, just think about the question.
Why did God forsake his son?
You may have a quick, potentially boxed up answer to this,
but before you offer it, let's just sit inside the question for a minute.
Let's just sit inside the belly of the well that is God's exacting justice.
In order to do this, in order for us to understand this forsaking,
we have to ask and answer two questions.
Number one, what is sin?
And number two, how much does sin cost?
What is sin is an important question?
Because every human I have ever met, myself, the chief among them, thinks that sin is an issue or at its most severe it's a struggle.
There's a cognitive human effort that seeks to pioneer a sense of freedom that has led us down a path from which there is no return.
apart from a divine intervening work of God.
This effort has sought to redefine the parameters of human responsibility
to redefine God's sovereignty,
and at its very core is an attack on what it means to be a human.
You see, if you do not have a right, concise,
and biblically whole definition of what sin really is,
then it is impossible to treasure the grace that shines against the backdrop of depravity.
Is it possible that we have traded beauty for ashes by minimizing what sin really is?
Is it possible that we're so good at justifying sin that we have created a definition of sin that works for us
but falls desperately short of biblically faithful.
You see, sin is not just something we do or something we have done.
It's not just a mistake we made or an error in thinking or speech.
There's more gravity to it than that.
It goes well beyond our limited constructs of cultural morality,
and it even presses in deeper beyond the rights and wrongs of the law.
You see, sin is not some well-meaning attempt that failed or an activity that happens outside the body that is somehow separate from the intentions inside the human soul.
Sin is a state of being.
It is a powerful force coated into our DNA.
It is alive.
It is aggressive.
It is deceptive.
And it is impossible to cure.
in and of our own efforts.
It is in a very practical sense,
a deep rejection of God's ultimate good
in God's glorious rule.
In essence, sin is the non-suprimacy of God
who was made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ.
Sin is the non-s supremacy of Christ.
It can be right.
defined as any feeling, thought, speech, or action that comes from a heart that does not treasure God above all things.
It is a heart that gives preference to anything over God ever.
So what is sin?
Sin is the glory of God, not honored.
It is the holiness of God, not reverenced.
It is the greatness of God, not admired, the power of God, not praise.
It is the truth of God, not sought, it is the wisdom of God, not esteemed, the beauty of God, not treasured, the goodness of God, not savored, the promises of God, not believed, the commandments of God, not obeyed.
It is the justice of God, not respected, and the wrath of God, not feared.
It is the grace of God, not cherished, the presence of God, not prized in the person of God, not loved.
That's what sin is.
So that leads us to our next question.
What does sin cost?
Specifically, what does sin cost us?
Well, the answer is simply everything.
It cost us everything.
Romans 623 states with resounding clarity that the cost or the wage of sin is death.
But in the same way that we can easily minimize the definition of sin,
we can easily minimize if not entirely missed the mortifying implications of death as sin's price.
You see, it is not just the physical death of our physical bodies.
It is the experience of being dead while our mortal bodies are alive.
The word wage means rations or stipend.
And the Apostle Paul writes of this wage by stirring images of soldiers receiving their payments.
And he puts this word in the plural.
You see, soldiers received payment in all different forms.
They were paid in meat, in flour, in money, in clothing, in lands promised, and on and on.
It was not just one form of payment.
That's why the Bible doesn't say wage of sin.
It says wages of sin is death.
What that means is that sin is dealing death as payment in multiple forms to all created things,
specifically us as people.
So what does it cost everything really mean?
It means that on every front imaginable,
it cost us every ounce of every good gift that we were to enjoy
as created beings delighting in their creator.
It broke everything.
It breaks everything.
It wrecked everything.
It is wrecking everything.
Sin has ruined our life.
It has ruined for us the very meaning of what it means to be human,
to be alive.
You see, to be alive to sin is to be dead to holiness and purity.
not kind of dead, dead.
It means to be dead to the true power of appreciating the beauties of virtue and subsequently
being confused and being lost in the chaos and the broken loose of the fallen creation through the abominations of all things vice.
It is to be completely lost in deadness.
At its very core, the thing that sin has truly cost us is the delicacy of perception that results from a healthy life.
What happens is that as evil gives birth to sin, so sin gives birth unto death.
Then, without hesitation, men cast themselves willfully.
into an utter deadness of conscience.
And that is just the first wage of sin.
It is death to beauty.
It is death to art.
It is death to health.
It is death to hope.
It is death to generosity.
It is death to feeling.
It is death to truly caring for anyone other than self.
It is death to celebration.
It is death to diversity.
It is death to intimacy.
It is death to truth, to living, to giving, to believing, to treasuring, and to flourishing.
It is death to flourishing.
God created all things, and he created that all things would live in shalom,
or would live in this state of universal flourishing.
And when sin entered, flourishing.
died. Sin killed it. And in a very real sense, sin cost us, and this is truly devastating.
Sin cost us purpose. The wages of sin is death, which is most harshly realized in this life
through a purposeless existence. So death, it is the separation of the separation of
of the soul from God.
As our Savior taught, the future death comes as a due wage to sin
and includes in itself the fire which shall never be quenched,
the worm that never dies, the outer darkness,
the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth,
and the departure into the everlasting curse of being alienated from God.
The misery of miseries is that sin's punishment is earned,
and it will certainly receive its due reward.
It's due reward.
It's due reward.
You see, sin must be paid for.
No one wants to pay for their sin.
No one wants to face the reckoning day.
So when Jesus cries out from the cross, my God, my God,
why have you?
Why have you forsaken me?
sin is the answer.
My sin?
Your sin?
Sin.
Somebody had to pay.
So hanging there.
Bleeding.
Gasping.
Jesus then utters the three most potent words ever spoken on this planet.
When he says,
It is finished.
What is it?
If it is finished, what is it?
What is it?
It is the inflexible judge called the law.
It is the weight of God's demands,
the punishment of rejection as a cause of sin.
It is the cries of creation, the groanings of rebellion.
It is the need for blood, the demand for justice, the cancer of sin, the sting of death.
It is the day of darkness, the empire of evil.
It is the nation of Satan, the plan to steal, to kill, and to destroy the weight of perfect performance.
kingdom of self in all of its prideful pursuits.
It is the path we could never walk.
It is the life we could never live.
And it is the death we do not want to die.
It is the longings that we can never satisfy.
It is the shame meant for us.
Our forsaken future.
All that death has killed, all that sin has killed,
and death will kill.
The wages of sin is death, and it is finished.
It is the death of death, and it is finished.
And it was.
Having done the will of the father, having been crushed by the will of the father,
he pushes up on the nails one last time, finds one last
breath and he lifts his head and he whispers and as his body drops and he breathes his last quiet your mind
close your eyes and listen and with your mind's eye look into his face can you see him
peek beyond your comfort look past your own preferences
look at him with your soul.
Take a deep breath in.
Can you smell the wages of your sin as they lay upon another man's body?
Open your eyes.
Open your ears.
And listen.
See this man.
He is in your place.
And he has something to say.